I was about halfway through the marathon when I saw the man with the plastic pink flamingo. Like me, he was jogging down a highway in coastal North Carolina. Unlike me, he had a beanie -- yes, with propeller -- perched on his head.

Keeping global warming down to a level people can live with means cutting carbon emissions to "near zero" by the end of the century, even in an increasingly industrialized world, the top U.N. experts on the issue reported Sunday.

Two news organizations' stories about National Security Agency surveillance, based upon documents leaked by Edward Snowden, have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service, often described as the highest prize in American journalism.

Glass, Google's high-profile entry into the world of wearable tech, may help launch a revolution if it's released later this year as expected. But test models already on the street have begun playing a more unlikely role -- as symbols in a simmering fight over Silicon Valley's impact on the city of San Francisco.

Anxiety simmered in the days before Chicago's school year began. Everyone there knew about the city's intractable gang problems, the explosive violence that came with it -- and the dangerous, shifting territories schoolchildren might cross even more often just to get to school.